October 29, 2014
Witness Account of the Trilokpuri Clashes
on Saturday
by A.M
I with a colleague of
mine reached East Delhi’s Trilokpuri by
12:00 am on Saturday. News about alleged
clashes had reached us late
on Friday night. We were told that the
clashes had broken out at around
8:00 pm on Friday but no one was visibly
injured. Bricks and empty beer bottles were hurled to and fro interspersed
with occasional gunshots. The police reached the area and restored calm.
Heavy police presence in the area restored confidence and sent people back
into their homes. This is what we had heard.
When we reached the spot
on Saturday afternoon at around
12:00 pm, both of us happened to walk
right into a mob which had assembled on the main road. Then they started
hurling bricks into the air, upped with roaring jubilation and thrill. All
at a physical enemy that was not visible. Terrified and taken by surprise,
we ducked and ran over to a nearby car parked by the curb. We crouched
behind it for over five minutes till we could run farther down to a
relatively deserted and safer stretch next to a mother dairy kiosk. That
was only one of the many such walk-ins we had and had walked in and out
of.
“Aaj toh minimum teen
ko kaatenge,” we heard a man say gleefully,
brandishing a double-edged dagger which he then slipped behind his shirt
and began strolling about after the crowd, after a seeming mood swing,
dispersed into the several gullis leading inside.
Over the next two hours,
frenzied mobs kept clogging narrow lanes and by-lanes connecting and
separating one block from another. Mobs wielding long-rusted swords and
rods, knives and bricks. We watched the frenzy unfold from a home we had
rushed into after a sudden crowd of participants appeared around a gulli bend
charging in our direction. While climbing up the stairs, we noticed bricks
stacked on each stair. The housewife who had ushered us in, embarrassed,
apologetically said, “Kya karein? Woh ham per hamla karenge toh apni
suraksha toh khudi karni padegi.”
This senseless and
directionless fury, we realised, was being whipped up for the fun of it.
And, as journalists, we sensed individual families had gathered
ammunition, mainly bricks and beer bottles, over the night for a final
showdown
on Saturday morning. A couple of hours
later, my colleague followed a rag picker collecting in a sack bricks
strewn over various roads. He saw the rag picker climb into a house and he
heard him saying, “Chalo bhai, aaj ke raat ka intezaam ho gaya hai.”
Meanwhile, police forces
took over an hour to get in sufficient troops to quell the clashes. A
surprising amount of time as casual time taken to come in considering
Mayur Vihar police station is a five minutes drive from Trilokpuri and
heavy troop deployment over
Friday night had already ensured police
teams were on standby through the night. The teams were positioned outside
Blocks 13, 14, 15 where the mobs had spilled over onto the main road.
Once the police blocked
the gulli entrances, they began inching inwards pushing rioters and
protesters back. Within an hour or more, most residents had crept back
into their houses. The Delhi police armed with tear gas and lathis,
the Rapid Acton Force in blue and the Central Reserve Police Force had
been called in to work as one.
The atrocities started
when policemen began arbitrarily searching houses and rounding
perpetrators in the absence of clean evidence or proof. Almost 1000
persons were actively involved in the stone throwing and no one knows
which blocks they belonged to and where they had walked to to participate
in the violence. Police, clueless and worked up, therefore, randomly began
banging on closed doors and shoving their lathis into houses to
drive fear and establish control over residents. Most of these houses,
however, happened to be in Muslim dominated areas especially in Blocks 14
and 27. The Indian Express reported that "the police have arrested
44 people — 32 Muslims and 12 Hindus" on charges of rioting as listed in
the FIRs. This despite Trilokpuri comprising 80 per cent Hindus ( Balmikis)
and 20 per cent Muslims. Lopsided statistics and arrests say much about
what was happening on the ground.
I along with at least
three other journalists was witness to police excesses committed during
the arbitrary rounding up. In Block 27, Delhi police forces happened to
see young boys on terraces and began banging on the door which was locked
on the inside. All houses were bolted on the inside but they specifically
chose three houses and broke down the locks and trooped in. Then began
screaming and sounds of blunt objects hitting human bodies were clearly
audible. When the police officers marched out of the three houses, they
were holding by the collars young terrified and injured boys.
Of the nearly 10 boys
rounded up from Block 27, one was bleeding from the eye. A lathi blow
had fallen on his right eye when he was picked up from his house.
Clutching at the bleeding eye, he was howling in pain. “Mujhe please
haspataal le chaliye. Mera aakh phoot gaya hai. Mai kya karunga,” he
was screaming while his poacher mercilessly dragged him barefeet on a
million glass shards and brick chips.
Another boy’s nebula was
bleeding. A lathi had hit him there. He was clutching at his skull
and was in shock seeing all the blood. He was limply walking barefoot over
the glass and stones. Barring these two injured youths, around three or
four policemen took turns blowing their hard cane lathis on all
parts of the alleged offenders' bodies while they screamed in pain and
kept falling to the ground.
Mothers and female
relatives came running out howling after their sons. Senior police
officers on standby told them to shut up or they would summon female cops.
The drama, the howling, the screaming, the abuses and the violence
continued for around 15 to 20 minutes before the women, helplessly crying
began picking up bricks lying on the ground and hurling it at the
retreating police officers. All of us tore ahead, ducking at the stones
raining on us. The police did not let go of the boys and men despite the
commotion. Then we turned left onto the street to safety.
All the boys rounded up
were dumped into jeeps and a frustrated and irritated police vented it all
out on the those they had caught. "Kal se naak mein dam kar rakha hai,"
one policeman said through gritted teeth while repeatedly shoving his
lathi through a jeep window into a detainees' back.
The next day I saw the
same boys being dragged into X-ray rooms. One was limping, the other wore
a blank look, unseeing and unthinking. Another's jeans were stained with
blood while another's hand was wrapped in bandage. They had been violated
and there was not shame or hiding on the part of the police.
I was witness to how the
Delhi police, had brazenly, in view of journalists, albeit without
cameras employed anarchic, illegal arrests, communal and extrajudicial
tactics to impose what they call 'law and order'- a phrase which
constantly equivocates with us, we who lie on the "clean" side of law and
those who live outside its underbelly.
Ends